


Freedom Is (another word for nothing left to lose)

by karrenia_rune



Category: Firefly, ST: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Community: multiverse5000, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-18
Updated: 2010-07-18
Packaged: 2017-10-10 15:48:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/101440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karrenia_rune/pseuds/karrenia_rune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Call it fate, call it chance, call it whatever you will but Kira and Mal have more in common than either would have cared to believe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Freedom Is (another word for nothing left to lose)

Disclaimer: Firefly and all of the characters who appear here or are mentioned are the creation of Joss Whedon etc; they do not belong to me. ST:DSN and its characters and events belong to Paramount and its respective creators and producers.  
"Freedom Is (Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose") by karrenia

He had worn at last one uniform in his spotty career as a soldier. At present he no longer cared a flying fig for what his former commanders in the Alliance said or did as long it did not impinge on his own activities; Malcolm Reynolds in his heart of hearts still held onto a little of the honor and traditions of the Browncoats.

 

The attractive auburn-haired woman in the russet-red and well-tailored uniform that looked as if it had seen better days.

There was a set to her shoulders and a gleam in his eye that bespoke both a challenge and an unspoken need. Of course, that was just his first impression. She looked angry, and she looked lost and that particular combination made for a most interesting challenge. Mal figured he would initiate the first move.

He had been wrong before and he would most likely be wrong again, after all he wasn't here to pick up chicks, he had landed in order to look for potential business contracts, but even in now one could still make time for a little age-old chivalry.

Mal prided himself on being a good judge of character and it certainly came as no idle boast because it had saved his own hide and the hides of his small crew on more than one occasion.

"Excuse me, Ma'am," drawled Mal with a shrug as he made his way across the crowded space port, and tapped her on the shoulder, "but might I be of assistance?"

For her part Kira Nerys was startled by the close proximity of a stranger standing so near her and reacting more on instinct than anything else immediately whirled and lanced out with a clenched right fist. Her fist connected with his nose and sent him back-pedaling a few paces.

"Ouch," he muttered under his breath. "Is that any way to treat somebody who's trying to help you?" he asked.

Kira recovered her considerable poise but not the handle on the anger and frustration that had been building up inside of her since her abrupt arrival in this unfamiliar, noisy and crowded space port.

Granted, she was aware that most away missions were sources of potential danger and that planet that she was head up the first contact mission had a reputation of being dangerous, but she could not have fouled up so utterly that she would lose all communication with the remainder of her team and the skeleton crew that had been left aboard the runabout the Rio Grande.

As these thoughts ran through her head Kira took the opportunity to study the tall well-built sandy-haired man who stood in front of her. He had been rubbing his nose from the moment where she had punched him, rocking back and forth on his heels but apparently none the worse for wear. "No offense," Kira muttered aloud. "You just took me by surprise."

"None taken, I'm sure," replied Mal. "Look," he shrugged, "It appears we've both got off on the proverbial wrong foot, so why don't we try this again?"

"I guess so," replied Kira.

"Welcome to Persephone; the name's Captain Malcolm Reynolds, and might I buy you a drink?"

Kira chuckled in spite of herself. "Since we're on the subject," she shrugged. "I guess it wouldn't hurt to exchange pleasantries, Major Kira Nerys."

Mal echoed her nonchalant shrug of mere moments ago. "Major, huh? What outfit you with?"

Kira, also, with all of her experience first early on with the Bajoran Resistance against the Cardassian occupation of her home-world and serving jointly with Starfleet knew a pointed question when she heard one.

And despite his easy charm and confidence she sensed something uneasy and dangerous behind the question as well. Instead of answering right away she replied. "Oh, you're smooth, very smooth. I'm getting the distinct impression that you even believe your own rap."

"You still haven't answered my question?" he replied.

"Which one?" she asked.

"About the drinks?"

"Oh, yes, thank you," she replied.

***

The bar was crowded and noisy but suddenly the mingled aromas, of food and drink and sweat suddenly became very welcoming. While her own sense of duty told her to try once again to communicate with her crew; she had been attempting to do so for hours now and so far a search of the space port had turned up nothing.

Mal threaded his way through the bar and chose a seat for them at a table in the back where their backs would be against the wall but they could still face out into the crowd. It was a deliberate choice but Kira wisely chose not to challenge it, if their positions had been reversed she most likely would have done the same.

"Have a seat," Mal remarked. "What would you like to drink?" Or maybe you would like something to eat first?

"I, I honestly don't know. Order for both of us, and I'll have whatever you're having, and as for food, spicy but not to the point where I'll end up burning the roof of my mouth."

"Can do." Mal flashed a charming smile at her. "Be right back."

***  
He was as good as he word at least in this initial outing for he came back with a tanker of what looked and smelled like ale, and it at least it was not blue like the Romulan stuff that the bartender on Deep Space Nine had been accustomed to serving her.

He also had two glasses and a platter of a meat and rice mixture and eating utensils.

They feel too without much further conversation and once their initial hunger had been assuage Kira glanced up at him once more.

"So, Captain, might I ask impose on your good graces a little while longer?"

"I shouldn't complain," Mal replied. "So fire away."

"You called this planet, Persephone. What star system is it in?"

"It's in the White Star System. Me and my crew come here periodically for refueling, a little down-time and to earn a few credits and the occasional passenger."

"Your crew?" she asked.

"Just now, we're down to yours truly, our pilot and his better half, Jayne, and then there's the Doc and his sis, he replied as a thoughtful and intense look passed across his handsome face like the clouds would pass across the face of the sun on her home-world.

"I didn't mean to pry," she remarked as she finished off the last of her meal and washed it down with a sip from her ale. "But I need to know what I'm getting myself into here."

While Kira firmly believed in not allowing her growing attraction to garrulous and charming Captain Reynolds to show, she did have to consider that there were quite a few qualities about him that brought to mind Vedek Bariel and their on-again, off-again stormy relationship.

Perhaps she had imbibed slightly more alcohol than her usual modest portion but she had been a long time dry and it kept him talking.

Mal, for his part, considered her that he could look past the official-looking uniform and see her as an individual and while he too had to weigh the pros and cons and confiding a person he had only just met.

However, there was something intriguing and challenging about this Kira Nerys, from the ridged lines that ran across the bridge of her nose to the single crystal-beaded earring that dangled from her left ear lobe; that made her rather fetching.

"Because you seem like a decent sort, and to know you're way around."

"Well enough," he replied. "Why do you ask?"

"Well," she replied. "It's like this. Either something drastically went wrong with the navigational computers aboard our ship, because I am definitely not where I am supposed to be."

"Where were you headed?" he asked.

"A planet called Ita IV, a formerly pre-warp civilization that had just petitioned for membership.

"In the Alliance," Mal interrupted.

Kira shook her head to rid it of both the fumes of alcohol consumption and the inevitable cob-webs. "Forgive, but I don't understand what you mean when you refer to this "Alliance."

"You mean to tell that you've never heard of the Alliance. The verse' ain't that big after all. So, tell me, Major, just where do you come from, huh?" he asked, still pleasant despite the implied threatening tone in his voice.

"I am from exactly where I say I am from," Kira hotly retorted. She was Bajoran and nothing, no one would ever change that one fundamental truth. "I am from the planet Bajor.

"Never heard of it," Mal answered after a moment's elapsed uncomfortable silence.  
And then a moment later added. "Still I haven't been everywhere there is to go, what's it like on your world?"

"Better than it used to be," Kira replied, relieved that another fight would not be forthcoming, at least, not yet.

"How so, and now I feel like I'm the one prying." Mal grinned and signaled to the waitress for a refill on their ale tanker and then added.

"We're ah, it's really difficult to explain, there are so many political, religious and societal nuances that I can't seem to adequately put into words," Kira shrugged and tossed her head back, a move that made her wavy auburn hair tousle around her face.  
"I guess the best way to put it would be to say that we're in a re-building phase."

"Fair enough?" Mal replied. "I guess, we've got more in common with each other than I believed."

"What makes you say that?" she demanded.

"Cause, for one very good reason, 'my crew and I are in a re-building phase; most ways it would seem we have been every since the battle at Serenity Valley on the planet Hera.

"Never heard of it?" she replied.

"Now, now, don't bristle so, my fine lady," Mal said when he saw that tell-tale mixture of anger and frustration that he had first noticed when he saw standing on the tarmac at the space port. "I didn't mean to imply that our situations were at all equable."

"I guess not," Kira replied, slightly mollified.

"If there's one thing I've learned, Kira, do you mind if I call you Kira?" he asked.

"Not really," she replied forcing herself to offer him an off-center wry smile of her own.

"If there's one thing I've learned back when I still gave a damn about what the Alliance said or did…"Mal trailed off for a moment as if apparent lost in thought over the past. "One has to fight for any number of things, there's causes and then there's causes and I don't know everything that you and your people went through.."

Kira was poised to protest that he did not have any right to presume that, but the look in his eyes forestalled her angry outburst.

"But we only got ourselves in the end," he finished.

 

Over the years her intense patriotism over both the present direction and the future of the Bajoran people and the planet itself had gotten her into more trouble and caused more arguments between her and her commanding officer aboard Deep Space Nine than she cared to recall.

"That reminds me," she remarked. "Have you seen anyone wearing uniforms resembling mine or ones with blue and mustard yellow with a silver badge pinned to the lapel?"

"No," Mal replied. "Were those your crew?" he asked.

"Yeah, but I've been searching for what feels like days, but it most likely would be more like hours, and still no sign of them. Do you suppose you could do me a favor and contact the planetary authorities and see if a ship called the Rio Grande is still in orbit?"

"I'll do better than that," Mal replied. "Why don't you come back to my ship with me and we'll help you search for them. We got scanners aboard and we'll find them."

"And if we don't?" she asked. Wondering, for the first time if it was the away team from the Rio Grande were the ones that had gone missing, or if it was the other way around? Maybe they were out looking for her. In any case, she was ready to accept Captain Malcolm Reynolds generous offer. "Lead the way," she replied and stretched out her hand for him to shake; after a moment the deal was sealed.


End file.
